In July, The Wall Street Journal spoke with Professor Colin Blaydon about the popularity of his private equity elective. When the course began in the late 1990s, he noted, just 20 percent of students wanted to enroll. Last spring, he said, nearly half the second-year class signed up for it. The industry will surely garner further attention from MBAs as the sector continues to heat up. "There has never been more capital available than there is today," Blaydon told Bloomberg Radio in November during an interview about increased private equity activity. While many companies attracted the attention of private equity firms this fall, there are no discernable trends as to which industries firms might focus on, he said. In December, Blaydon told The Washington Post that 2006 was "a record-setter for capital raised by private equity funds and capital invested by private-equity funds" and predicted that the pace of deal making would proceed into 2007.

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In August, the Financial Times profiled Professor Punam Keller in its "Women to Watch" series. Keller told the publication how she combines her knowledge of marketing, psychology, and economics to design customized health communication and retirement savings packages for companies. "I'm hoping that adoption of some of my research findings could ultimately enhance both employee welfare and customer satisfaction," Keller said. "If companies can understand how people make decisions about healthcare and retirement savings, then they can develop self-management incentive plans that will lower the burden on the company…. And increasing the well-being of employees is integral to how those employees can serve customers."

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During the run-up to the holiday season, Sony announced the availability of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming console and released it in limited supply. Professor Eric Johnson of Tuck's Center for Digital Strategies told the NewsFactor Network, "If you look at almost all the hot toys, and that leads right up into video games, they all had some element of shortage that got them rolling." However, he predicted to Reuters, that with such a severe shortage of PS3s on the market, Microsoft will be "the real winner this Christmas." While shortages can create beneficial media buzz, Sony's shortage was so severe that its rivals would likely gain, he said.

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A September article in USA TODAY reported bad news coming out of Detroit. Job cuts and projected losses from Ford and DaimlerChrysler, respectively, pointed "to an inescapable conclusion: U.S. automakers are going to have to get smaller if they ever hope to regroup and get bigger again." Professor Richard D'Aveni agreed that "we've been watching a long-term death spiral in the auto industry" but commented, "The fundamental problems are not being solved by simply cutting back." He told the paper, "Detroit will be able to save itself only through radical action: breaking union contracts, investing in better parts and methods to increase quality, creating fresh new brands and getting more control over its dealer networks."

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Last fall, Tuck ranked #2 in The Wall Street Journal's annual ranking of the world's best business schools, based on a survey of MBA recruiters. Participating recruiters named Tuck as the top school for recruiting MBAs with high ethical standards; among the top three schools in General Management, Strategy, and Corporate Responsibility; and among the top 10 schools in Marketing, Operations Management, and Entrepreneurship. Tuck placed 2nd in the 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit's Which MBA? ranking of the 100 best full-time MBA programs worldwide, and 11th in BusinessWeek's biennial business-school ranking. BusinessWeek awarded the school A+ ratings for teamwork and teaching quality and an A in communication, analytic skills, and career service. Overall the school placed second in intellectual capital. In January, Tuck placed #7 among U.S. schools and #9 worldwide in the annual Financial Times ranking of MBA programs. A school's FT rank was determined by a combination of three factors—alumni career progression and salary purchasing power, the diversity of the school and its program, and perceptions of the school's research capabilities. Tuck received additional recognition as a top school worldwide for Mexicans and Latin Americans, placing #14 in Expansión's first-ever international MBA ranking of the best global MBAs for Mexicans and #15 in AméricaEconomía's rankings of the world's best schools for Latin Americans. Hispanic Business ranked Tuck's MBA program as the #3 program in the country for Hispanics.

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Alasdair Trotter T'07 described the intensity of the first year of business school in an August article with BusinessWeek. "You can be told as many times as you want that you will work hard, but nothing, not your undergraduate degree or work experience, completely prepares you for what it will be like." BusinessWeek Editorial Assistant Megan Tucker experienced this first-hand when she attended Tuck's Pre-Enrollment Program, led by Professor Peter Regan. "Tuck may have designed math camp to be low-stress, but it's nothing if not exhausting," she wrote. Tuck students confided to Tucker that the program helped them adjust to their first year. "The semester was immediately as rigorous and quantitative as everyone told me it was going to be," Kristyn McLeod T'08 said. "[It] helped me figure out what I know and what I don't know, and acknowledge the areas where I'm going to need to spend a little more time."

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In an October article, Professor Robert Shumsky told CFO Magazine that even though some airlines are profiting after filing for bankruptcy, reducing their fleets, and reorganizing, it can all be for naught "unless you have an employee base that focuses on keeping costs low." In November, the Financial Times printed a case study on airline alliances in which Shumsky said that "The fundamental idea (behind global airline alliances) is to expand an airline's network in a way that is less expensive than buying planes or opening routes." He added, "Airlines can sometimes cheat the system" to optimize their own revenues at the expense of an alliance partner. Shumsky noted that the biggest challenge for partners in global network alliances is how to split up the revenue. While airline revenue management systems are notoriously bad at talking to one another, he believes that "it will happen in the next few years."

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A July report on leadership in The Wall Street Journal included a recommended reading list that highlighted Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), coauthored by Professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. "This book is full of rich case examples and will be very helpful to any senior executive who wants to launch a new business venture within a corporate environment," the write-up stated. The winter issue of strategy+business touted the book as "the single best strategic book of the year."

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